New Flu Strain Created For Research Leaves The Human Immune System Completely Defenseless

A scientist who carried out research on making influenza viruses
more infectious has deliberately created a potentially lethal
strain of flu that can evade the human immune system.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has
genetically manipulated the 2009 strain of pandemic flu in order
for it to “escape” the control of the immune system’s
neutralising antibodies, effectively making the human population
defenceless against its reemergence.

Most of the world today has developed some level of immunity to
the 2009 pandemic flu virus, which means that it can now be
treated as less dangerous “seasonal flu”.

Professor Kawaoka intentionally set out to see if it was possible
to convert it to a pre-pandemic state in order to analyse the
genetic changes involved, the Independent said.

The study is not published, however some scientists who are aware
of it are deeply concerned that Dr Kawaoka was allowed to
deliberately remove the only defence against a strain of flu
virus that has already demonstrated its ability to create a
deadly pandemic that killed as many as 500,000 people in the
first year of its emergence.

Professor Kawaoka has so far kept his research secret but
admitted that the work is complete and ready for submission to a
scientific journal. The experiment was designed to monitor the
changes to the 2009 H1N1 strain of virus that would enable it to
escape immune protection in order to improve the design of
vaccines, he said.

“Through selection of immune escape viruses in the laboratory
under appropriate containment conditions, we were able to
identify the key regions [that] would enable 2009 H1N1 viruses to
escape immunity,” Professor Kawaoka said in an email.

“Viruses in clinical isolates have been identified that have
these same changes in the [viral protein]. This shows that escape
viruses emerge in nature and laboratory studies like ours have
relevance to what occurs in nature,” he said.

Prior to his statement to The Independent, Professor Kawaoka’s
only known public mention of the study was at a closed scientific
meeting earlier this year. He declined to release any printed
details of his talk or his lecture slides.

The work was carried out at Wisconsin University’s $12m (£7.5m)
Institute for Influenza Virus Research in Madison which was built
specifically to house Professor Kawaoka’s laboratory, which has a
level-3-agriculture category of biosafety: one below the top
safety level for the most dangerous pathogens, such as Ebola
virus.

However, this study was done at the lower level-2 biosafety. The
university has said repeatedly that there is little or no risk of
an accidental escape from the lab, although a similar US
Government lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
in Atlanta with a higher level-3 biosafety rating was recently
criticised over the accidental exposure of at least 75 lab
workers to possible anthrax infection.

Professor Kawaoka’s work had been cleared by Wisconsin’s
Institutional Biosafety Committee, but some members of the
committee were not informed about details of the antibody study
on pandemic H1N1, which began in 2009, and have voiced concerns
about the direction, oversight and safety of his overall research
on flu viruses.

Rebecca Moritz, who is responsible for overseeing Wisconsin’s
work on “select agents” such as influenza virus, said that
Professor Kawaoka’s work on 2009 H1N1 is looking at the changes
to the virus that are needed for existing vaccines to become
ineffective.

“With that being said, this work is not to create a new strain of
influenza with pandemic potential, but [to] model the
immune-pressure the virus is currently facing in our bodies to
escape our defences,” Ms Moritz said.

“The work is designed to identify potential circulating strains
to guide the process of selecting strains used for the next
vaccine…The committee found the biosafety containment procedures
to be appropriate for conducting this research. I have no
concerns about the biosafety of these experiments,” she said.

Professor Kawaoka said that he has presented preliminary findings
of his H1N1 study to the WHO, which were “well received”.

“We are confident our study will contribute to the field,
particularly given the number of mutant viruses we generated and
the sophisticated analysis applied,” he said.

“There are risks in all research. However, there are ways to
mitigate the risks. As for all the research on influenza viruses
in my laboratory, this work is performed by experienced
researchers under appropriate containment and with full review
and prior approval by the [biosafety committee],” he added.